Wednesday, September 24, 2008

I always thought Ryan got frustrated with me for the whole dog rescue thing, but I realized I was wrong when he rolled up in his truck after work with this sweet little angel two nights ago.

It's the first time he has been solely responsible for bringing a dog into our home. This dog, who we're calling Nina, was turned over to Ryan at work by a friend of his. This guy's sister got her a couple months ago and decided she couldn't handle her anymore. She left for Texas for a month and chained the dog to a chair on her front porch. Then she called her brother and told him she was there two days later and to get rid of her. She said she didn't want her there when she got home, and she didn't care what he did with her, so he called us.Ryan was totally appauled when he got to the house to find her chained up with no food or water. She had gotten herself tangled up around the chair she was tied to and only had a couple inches to move. It looks like she may have gone hungry for more than just two days. Just look at her little ribs poking out....bless her heart.She ate so much the first night that she puked. I felt bad for her, but I had to take the food from her so she wouldn't make herself sick anymore.

She's only about six months old, but seems to do pretty well going potty outside. We've had one accident in her kennel since she came to stay with us a few days ago. She gets along really well with all the other dogs. We even have my friends Mandy's dog right now because she's in Cancun. So, that means we have six dogs in the house!!!!!I know, I know, that sounds completely crazy....but it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Ryan and I were sitting on the kitchen floor the night he brought her home with all six dogs with us and I looked around and said "we really are crazy, aren't we?" His reply was a stern and defensive "NO!!!!!!"

I knew I married this man for a reason!!I mean, how could you look at this face and call him crazy?!?!?!? He's just as sweet as she is!!!These pictures are all before we had a chance to get her cleaned up and groomed. Our neighbor, Marcus, took her yesterday and clipped her hair and nails and gave her a bath. She looked like a different dog when I got home last night. I'll have to post some "after" pictures when I get a chance.We may have already found a home for her. I'm really hoping things will work out with the girl who has her tonight. Marcus knows a girl who is looking to get a puppy, so she took her home with her for a few days to see how it goes. If it doesn't work out for some reason, I'll be hitting you all up to help me help her.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Remember not too long ago when I posted a blog about jumping out of a perfectly good airplane? Well, I can officially mark that off the bucket list now!!! Ryan and I along with a few friends took the plunge this past Saturday.

I have to say, it was one of the most awesome experiences of my life!!!!When we first got there, we all had to watch a short video about the jump. To be really honest, I don't even remember much of the video now. The instructors themselves were much more helpful. After the video, we had to sign our lives away promising not to sue them. When we finished all of that, it was pretty much just sit around and wait for your turn.We waited for probably a little over an hour before our instructors started to get us geared up. Dave and Ryan got to go up in the same plane together.Seth was actually the last one to jump. He had to go up in a plane with a stranger. We all thought it was kind of funny because this was all his idea to begin with!!!

This is basically how it works:

Both you and your instructor have a harness on that attaches you to one another. Your instructor will be hooked up behind you with your backside to his frontside.....cozy!!! They have you put the harness on before you get into the plane, but you are not attached to the instructor yet.

When your flight is fuelded up and ready to go, you board the plane and take a little ride to about 13,000 feet. It seemed like it took forever. I thought that after Ryan took off...it seemed like it took forever before we actually saw him floating down to us. I felt the same way when I was flying up. It seemed like we were in the plane for about fifteen minutes before anything really happened.

When it's about time to jump, the pilot will start counting down the minutes. He starts out at "Three minutes." This was when I finally started to get a little nervous!!! "Two Minutes!!" The instructor attaches all the clips and clasps and finally, when the pilot gives the green light, the door flies open. "One Minute!!!!" That was when it got a little scary. I was literally squatting outside on a metal platform attached to an airplane two miles above the ground. Am I really this crazy?!?!? YES I AM!!!!

You put you feet on this little tiny platform outside the door of th aplane. You're basically sitting on the instructor's lap at this point. He is sitting on the side of the plane. Then he said "one two three GO".....and we went!!!!!!!

OMG..........What a freaking rush!!!!!!! The free falling speeds normally reach up to about 120miles per hour, so for about a minute, I was falling that fast. That felt like a long minute actually. It was so loud when you were free falling. Your cheeks a flappin' in the wind like a big ol' flag or something. I noticed they didn't flap as bad when I quit screaming and shut my mouth!!!

And you know what the funny thing is............I never once got that feeling you get on a roller coaster when your stomach drops out from under you. Not once. There was way too much air pushing up against you as you fall through it to make you feel any of that.

Once you have freefallen almost 7,000 feet, your instructor will deploy the chute. They do this at about 5,000 feet. As soon as he pulled the chute, everything became silent. It happened almost instanty. We did get jerked upward just a little when the chute deployed, but it didn't hurt or anything.

After the rush of the free fall and even the rush from the noise of the free fall, the silence and tranquility you experience floating through the air is like nothing I have ever experienced. It was so peaceful. You couldn't hear any noise from anything.....it was amazing I've never heard such silence. We floated for appoximately five minutes before getting ready for our landing. My instructor even let me take control of the chute for a few minutes. It was really cool. We did some flips and some crazy corkscrew stuff heading straight towards the ground.

I always felt safe. That was one thing I was pleasantly surprised about. I guess I just assumed I wouldn't feel safe at some point....I mean, we were jumping out of a plane for crying out loud!!! But no, really, I felt extremely safe the whole entire time.

As we enjoyed the canopy ride down towards land, my instructor started going over some tips on how to land. Our landing was almost perfect. We did stumble a little getting our balance, but we didn't fall.

This is Ryan and his instructor coming in for their landing. I can tell it's Ryan because his pants kept creeping up with all those straps between his legs!!! You're supposed to put your legs up like you're in a sitting position when you land until your partner has touched the ground first. Then you drop your feet to stabilize yourself.This is also Ryan. He had a pretty good landing, but the air got caught up in their chute for just a second and pulled them around a little at the end.

This is Dave coming in for his landing.Another one of Dave.............almost made it now!!!TA DA!!!!!! WAY TO GO GUYS!!!!!!This is the plane that Laura and I were in. If you look at the very tip top of this picture, you will see two parachutes. I am the one who is the lowest, and Laura is above me. I wanted to jump first because I thought if I had to watch someone else, I might back out!!! It was really cool to look up and watch Laura when she jumped. I could just barely see them until the chute deployed, but it was fun to be up in the air at the same time. We were waving at eachother and stuff. I can't even put into words how much fun it was!!!!!This is me coming in. I was already getting disappointed by this time because I didn't want the ride to be over yet!!!Here I am right before my nearly perfect landing!!!! I was ready to climb in the next plane going up and do it all over again by then!!!!!I MADE IT!!!!!!!!!AND I LOVED IT!!!!!!!Last one to fly and last one to fall was Seth. He loved it too. I have a feeling we all have a new addiction to deal with..................Let me just tell ya, skydiving is a lot more expensive than most addictions, but as weird as it sounds, I think it's a lot less risky.It looked Seth had kind of a bumpy landing, but I think the wind might have caught their chute kind of like it did on Ryan's and just pulled them a round a little. Pretty sure Sethy Poo landed on his butt!!!!!!Here's the gang: Dave, me, Ryan, Laura, and Seth.

So, when one of you crazy friends or relatives of mine gets a wild hair and you decide to go skydiving, you just give me a call..................I'm IN!!!!

Monday, September 08, 2008

Over Labor Day weekend, Ryan and I celebrated our Honeymoon Hookah style!!!! We decorated our tent with a bunch of "Just Married" stuff and our friends decorated their tents with luau stuff for our honeymoon. We even won some freebies for our decorations.Kelly Ann even found one of those cardboard cut-outs that you stick your face in for pictures. I only got one picture of it, but Ryan got almost a whole roll of 35mm of people goofing off with it. We saved all the beer cans for the first day or so to string up and hang on the tent. Cousin Aaron was going to pull us around in the cart with some cans hanging off of it, but we got too distracted, and that never happened. Oh well, it was a fun idea.Here's part of the gang hanging out in "Reynoldsburg." That's what we called the area where Nick and Ashley Reynolds were camping behind Ryan, Dave, Kelly Ann, and me. We called our area Chaplis. Ashley's dad came with her. I was happy to see him there. It totally reminds me of something my dad and I would have done together.Caught Ryan and Cousin Aaron in mid high five!!! YES!!!!!Nap time for Matt and Liz. That's one of the best things at Hookahville....taking a nap in the shade. I slept almost one whole day away. It was awesome!!!! You all know how I love my sleep!!!The lineup for Hookahville was great this year. We got to see Arrested Development. It was so cool!!! They split up for awhile after they hit it big in the early nineties, but I'm pretty sure this is the original lineup. I could be wrong, so forgive me if my facts aren't right, but that was my understanding from hearing the band talking about being "back together again." The old guy is even still with them. I always wanted to call him Mr. Wendel because of that song they did by the same name, but I'm not sure if that's his name, or just my imagination. He definitely gives them a spiritual feel when they play.This chick had the most beautiful voice. She was the main singer in their big hit "Tennessee." The crowd went nuts when that song started.Another act I was happy to see was Indiana's own Derick Howard. He's from Columbus, IN. He does a really cool little loop thing with his music where he plays a little of each instrument, records it, and then plays another instrument over it. He plays every instrument himself. Kind of like Keller Williams, if you're familiar with him at all. in this picture, he is sitting on his drum. it sounds kind of like a big congo or something like that.

The one song that blew me away was a Paul Simon cover, and I cannot remember the name of the song for the life of me. If I remember later.....I'll post it!!! Derick has been opening for Hookah at Lafayette Brewing Company for quite awhile now, so I was really happy for him that he made the lineup this year. He has been hoping for this for a long time. It should be pretty good exposure for him.I was also thrilled to see Bela Fleck. He was playing with Abagail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet. I had seen him once before, but it was probably close to ten years ago. He plays a pretty mean banjo. Abagail Washburn was pretty impressive herself!!!

I missed a few bands that I wasn't already familiar with, but I could hear everything from the campsite. Everyone sounded great. It was just way too hot to be out in front of the stage all day long. There's no shade out there at all, so jumping, dancing, screaming and singing along with the band can get real hot real quick!!! We never missed a second of Ekoostik Hookah though!!! We never do!!!

We had a pretty bad experience at Spring Hookahville with hassels getting in and out the gates so we could get to our vehicle. Some people, including our group, stood in line for nearly seven hours AND missed the opening bands because of the line, so the guys from Ekoostik Hookah and Steve Trickle, the owner of the venue where Hookahville is held, did what they could to make it up to everyone.

First of all, they gave us a free night. Usually, if you want to go a night early, you have what they call the "Earlybird" option where you can pay an extra twenty bucks to get there earlier than everyone else, find a good campsite, and see a couple small bands. So, they made the "earlybird" free. Second, Ekoostik Hookah played a set that night. Normally they do two nights, this time, we got three for the price of two. That was so awesome that they would do that for their fans.

It was a huge inconvenience, and a real pain in the ass this past spring, but honestly, how many bands do you think would even care enough to ackowledge that there was a problem? Not many. That's why I love these guys. I know I've said it lots of times before, but it's true. We're more like friends than fans.

As some of you may remember, there have been a couple times when people's underwear end up on stage. This time, we set them up with some big ol' Granny Panties!!! All the people who were camping with us signed them, and Ryan and I wrote "Just Married" on the waistband. Our friend Kelly Jo from Michigan sewed a schwa on them ahead of time. Cliff, the bassist even copmlimented my throw. He called it a "three pointer." I only had a split second to actually catch John holding them up. he grabbed them in between songs, so I only got one blurry picture to remeber the moment!!!!! They guys were on fire all weekend long. They pulled out a couple older songs that we hadn't heard much since John Mullins rejoined the band. They also covered some good old songs I never thought I'd hear them play. One of them was "All Apologies" by Nirvana. That was a total surprise!!! Cliff sang that. We are all big fans of anything Cliffy sings!!!Towards the end of the evening, especially at Hookahville, Cliffy usually gets a little playful. He dances around all over the stage, and gets this ornery little way about him. It always gets fun when Cliffy's been drinking!!! My man Eric got up from the drums just before the end of the show. He always does. It's a huge treat for eveyone when Eric gets up to sing. He did a cover of "Chest Fever" by The Band with horns backing him up. It was SWEET!!!!

Overall, I think this was one of the best Hookahvilles I've been to. We had great company, got to see lots of friends from out of state, had one of the best lineups yet, celebrated our honeymoon with our best friends, ate good food, drank good drinks, had lots of good wishes floating our way because of the wedding....................it really couldn't have been much better.

Attics of my Life

About Me

I am a 33 year old female going on 16. I still get carded for cigarettes. I'm finally getting to the age that I appreciate that.
I am an x-ray technologist and also the clinical instructor for the school of radiography for St. Vincent Hospital. Basically that means I teach people how to become an x-ray tech.
I have 3 mini dachshunds and a big fat beagle. Those are my children.
I'm a struggling guitar novice, but I love to pick around. I also play a little piano.
I love to go to concerts and festivals. I love to travel, even though I don't go very far very often.
My husband and I volunteer for a no-kill animal rescue in our hometown. We have been foster parents for several animals, and helped them find their new forever homes.
Living life to its fullest is my daily goal.